Huawei has no plans to purchase BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) or any other company in a bid to expand its smartphone business, according to a senior Huawei executive.
"We haven't considered (an acquisition)," Chen Lifang, a Huawei senior vice president and board member, told reporters in London on Wednesday, according to Reuters. "We want to rely on ourselves."
BlackBerry is considering strategic options, including a possible sale, and reportedly wants to wrap up a sales process by November. In the past, Huawei has been reportedly linked to a possible BlackBerry acquisition. Analysts have also said Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, which has been struggled to regain sales momentum, could be a Huawei acquisition target.
In June Huawei tamped down speculation that it was interested in Nokia's (NYSE:NOK) handset business, which has since been purchased by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) for around $7.2 billion.
And in August, HTC denied rumors that the company is planning to sell itself, but it launched a share buyback plan aimed at shoring up its stock price as it continues to try to turn its business around.
Huawei was the No. 5 smartphone maker in the world in the second quarter, according to Strategy Analytics, with 11.1 million smartphone shipments, up from 6.6 million in the year-ago period. The Chinese company is trying to bulk up its presence with higher-end models aimed at Western markets.
On Wednesday, Huawei announced a deal with ARM Holdings that will allow Huawei to use the ARMv8 architecture to design its own microprocessor cores. Huawei has partnered with ARM since 2004, and ARM's processor designs have found their way into Huawei's cloud and network gear as well as its mobile devices; Huawei said its investment in the ARM ecosystem since 2004 runs to hundreds of millions of dollars.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this AllThingsD article
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